The present invention relates to a secured doorway framing, and more particularly to a protective reinforcement plate securely affixed to a wall stud means and an adjoining door frame side rail to prevent unlawful entry into a structure closed by a door.
One of the easiest and most common ways of breaking into a home or other building is to kick in the door if it is not possible to tamper with the lock. Since the wooden door frame side rail of the door frame is weakened at the point where it defines a door latch bolt hole receiving the lock bolt, a well-placed kick near that point, i.e. at the level of the lock, can easily cause the door jamb to split and crack, thereby permitting an unauthorized person or persons to enter.
Virtually all residences have wooden door frames and frame houses have walls whose wall boards are attached to wooden studs, such as two-by-fours, the doorway framing including door frame side rails adjacent the wall studs. Wooden or composition board doors are mounted in such a framing by hinging one side of the door to one door frame side rail while the other side of the door has a lock recessed thereinto, with a latch bolt projecting therefrom into a latch bolt hole in the other door frame side rail. A striker plate is usually mounted on this side rail over the hole and has a hole aligned therewith to permit the latch bolt to enter for locking the door and to be withdrawn therefrom by the operation of a key for opening the door. Due to the small amount of door frame material remaining between the latch bolt hole and the inside edge of the frame, a suitable force, such as a kick, at or near this point will cause this portion of the door frame to crack or split, thereby permitting unwanted entry.
One approach to the prevention of undesired entry is an attempt to prevent jimmying of locks and, for that purpose, a number of proposals have been made to mount protective shields over the gap between the door and the door jamb so as to make it impossible for anyone to insert a thin instrument therebetween for forcing the bolt to be retracted. Guard plates of this type are disclosed, for instance, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,279,840, 3,405,962, 3,592,498, 3,645,045 and 3,874,717. These plates are not designed to reinforce the doorway framing but merely prevent access to various portions of the lock.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,815,945 discloses a door frame security plate ostensibly designed to prevent the door from being kicked in. This however, requires additional weakening of the jamb by milling out a seat for the security plate and, in addition, the plate extends in the general direction of any force that would be applied to break in. Therefore, it fails to provide a desirable reinforcement securing the frame against being split.